You Died, We Cried: Ranking “Les Miz”

“Les Misérables”“The camera soars on high, the orchestra bellows, and then, whenever somebody feels a song coming on, we are hustled in close, forsaking our bird’s-eye view for that of a consultant rhinologist.” Read more of Anthony Lane’s review. David Denby offered some advice related to the film: “There’s Still Hope for People Who Love ‘Les Mis.’ ” Michael Schulman ranked the singers, starting with Anne Hathaway.

If you, like me, spent Christmas day eating spare ribs and waiting on line to see “Les Misérables” (but maybe not in that order), you’ve had time to contemplate the relative vocal prowess of its stars, not all of whom are exactly Pavarotti. Much has been made of Tom Hooper’s directorial approach, which required the actors to sing live on set, rather than lip-synching to a prerecorded track—with decidedly mixed results. So who fared the best, and who was just plain misérable? A ranking, from best to worst, below:

Tier One: Masters of the House

Anne Hathaway: O.K., Anne. You win. You lost twenty-five pounds and chopped off all your hair, then drew on every acting-class sense-memory exercise you could muster for that one-take of “I Dreamed a Dream.” You set the high-water mark early on, then had the decency to expire so that others could have their shot. You died; we cried. Here’s your Oscar. Next!

Aaron Tveit: A veteran of Broadway musicals like “Next to Normal” and “Catch Me If You Can,” Tveit is one of the film’s more seasoned singers, and it shows. Granted, as Enjolras, he has an easier job than most: blaze with revolutionary zeal, fight to the death, and look good doing it. No tortured ballads here.

Samantha Barks: As the cast’s sole unknown, the twenty-two-year-old West End actress handles the forlorn Éponine—a role that, for many a theatre major, elicits cry-face histrionics—with poise. Extra points for being Manx.

Tier Two: Do I Stay and Do I Dare?

Hugh Jackman: We all know that Jackman can sell a big number while tap-dancing and playing the didgeridoo. He’s got chops. So it’s no surprise that he carries the ten-ton role of Jean Valjean—slave turned job creator turned fugitive mensch—with gusto. (And, for the first few scenes, with Richard Brody’s beard.) In his musical soliloquies, he embraces Hooper’s paradoxical aesthetic of power anthem meets Stanislavski. Still, some of those high notes are too high even for Aussie Superman.

Helena Bonham Carter and Sasha Baron Cohen: What’s the difference between Bonham Carter’s Mrs. Lovett in “Sweeney Todd” and her Madame Thénardier? None. Both are droll penny-pinching wenches, played with maximum minimalism. The corpse-bride act works better here, confined to comic relief. Alongside Baron Cohen, as her partner in petty crime, she offers a welcome reprieve from all that emoting. Neither really sings, but why bother?

Russell Crowe: As Javert, Crowe has received the brunt of the ridicule—including from Anthony Lane, to whom he sounded “as if a platoon of infantry, stationed in his immediate rear, had just fixed bayonets without giving sufficient warning.” But I’ll admit, I didn’t mind him. He was burly, he was brooding, and his back-of-the-throat warble sounded not unlike “Labyrinth”-era Bowie. He’s no belter, but at least his band, Russell Crowe & The Ordinary Fear of God, plays more to his range.

Tier Three: This Hell I’m Living

Amanda Seyfried: Let’s admit that Cosette, despite wearing the show’s only unsoiled dresses, isn’t such a great part: she’s more caged canary than human ingénue, prone to mindless love-at-first-sight duets with her fellow-ninny, Marius (see below). Even so, the live-singing approach was particularly hard on Seyfried, who has impossibly high notes to hit and barely squeaks them out.

Eddie Redmayne: I like Eddie Redmayne. In the Broadway play “Red” and in the film “My Week with Marilyn,” he made the cipher-narrator character more interesting than written, and his freckled-Etonian look is hard to resist. But as Loverboy—a.k.a. Marius—he croons in an overwrought falsetto that sounds as uncomfortable as it probably felt.